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The Jobo Plan of Dazaifu, Town Planning and Structure of a Regional-administrative Town in Ancient and Medieval Japan

1989; The Human Geographical Society of Japan; Volume: 41; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4200/jjhg1948.41.412

1883-4086

Akihiro Kinda,

Financial Crisis of the 21st Century

T. Kagamiyama reported that the Jobo grid pattern of Dazaifu consisted of 24 bo East-west and 22 bo North-south in 1968. Each bo was thought to be a rectangular shape of approximately 109 meters each side, the same as the Jori grid pattern. This is the only restored plan of Dazaifu in spite of many papers and reports from archaeology, history and geography for 20 years.This paper reports on a 100 meter-interval grid pattern in the vicinity of the sites of main administrative buildings of Dazaifu (Figures 1 and 2) and reconstructs the Jobo grid pattern of this size as shown in Figures 2 and 4. The area of each bo is 8 tan (approx. 0.95 hectares) which is the upper limit of the area of paddies in historical documents (Table 1). Some documents showed that administrators and the principal temple also recognized this size bo in the 11th century.The 100 meters unit closely resembles the 280 shaku of Taishaku at the beginning of the 8th century. Some ditches or channels in ancient and medieval times which were archaeologically excavated, were found on the 100 meter-interval grid pattern. The distance of center lines of main administrative buildings and the principal temple is also a multiple number of 100 meters. The distribution of paddies in historical documents is reasonable from the point of view of physical features on the restored Jobo Plan (Figure 3, 4 and 5).The place indication system of Jobo was used after 975 and not before 905. It seems to have been introduced during this period. In this period, the more splendid main buildings were rebuilt after the battle in 941, and the number of administrators and bureaucrats increased. Several kinds of activities of Dazaifu became independent departments at the same time.This tendency seems to have required a systematic place indication system for allocating paddies of each independent department. In fact such new planning of Dazaifu was possible in the middle of the 10th century. Administrators and bureaucrats of Dazaifu must have regarded their town as a smaller ancient capital. Dazaifu was a large town consisting of several groups of facilities or scattered sectors until the middle of the 10th century. But the Jobo Plan of Dazaifu was quite different from the Jobo plan of capitals. It was introduced mainly for allocating or indicating paddies as in the Jori indication system in rural areas in the middle of the 8th century.